There is a Time and a Place
by Metroid13
Summary: And there is a bullet for everyone. Massive spoilers for "Adam Raised a Cain."


**There is a Time and a Place**

I wake.

---

I wake.

--

There's a quick, almost smooth easiness about it, like I hadn't been sleeping at all. I don't really ever sleep, though. I nap. I catch winks. I try to be ready. That isn't enough, though, so I grab the Glock 17 near my head and look around for a moment.

Readiness is never enough. But a gun? A gun never has to be ready. It only has to shoot.

---

I feel miserable, worse than I've ever felt in all my life except for one instance. I feel groggy as hell and I think I've slept for days on end in this dark tunnel. There's a heaviness in my entire body that compels me not to move... not to think, just to keep sleeping. Maybe sleep forever.

It occurs to me that I want desperately to die. I've seen the movies. I've heard of radiation poisoning. That's not how I want to go. I don't want to wait and die like a wretch. I want something better.

I look around, absently turning on my cellphone light and I see that Kyle isn't around.

--

I'm fine. I often am. The machine is with me, in the truck. She's awake, and she looks at me in a cursory sort of way. I'm still here. Still an asset to her. I'll never rise above that position.

I don't really want to. I'm comfortable as a soldier. I don't need her approval, like John does. I am her partner when required. I think she's a liability, personally. Professionally you can't ask for better than an indestructible machine.

She saved me a few hours ago. Killed two people. For me. I'm grateful for that.

It doesn't mean I love her. In the end, we'll always have a relationship depending on her functionality. I can die in an instant if she wants it to be.

Somehow, I think I'd be able to put up a fight.

My cellphone rings.

---

I drop the cellphone in shock. It doesn't break; machines are tough little things.

But fuck the cellphone. I go nuts, go crazy. I forget how to speak for a few minutes as I grope around blindly for my brother, my family, the only thing I know that's left in the world that hasn't been destroyed in nuclear fire.

Above my head, on the street, I hear pounding footsteps that reverberate down to my sewer. I look up, mouth open, eyes wide, wondering if it's him.

I know it's not, though. He's not that loud.

And suddenly, I also hear gunshots and loud rumbling. And I decide I don't want to call out to Kyle anyhow. I just start walking.

--

It's John. The caller ID says so. I think _It's about fucking time_ and answer it, glancing at the machine as I do so.

She seems to know already. Bitch.

"John."

"Derek! Hey, is Cameron with you? Are you okay?"

I'm still a bit jittery from having been tazed and tied to a chair, but other than that I'm fine. I say as much.

"We're fine. Are you?"

"I'm... okay." He pauses again, suddenly breathing hard over the phone. And then I hear nothing for a little bit.

"John," I say patiently.

He brings the phone back. "Y-yeah. Uh... god."

The machine cocks her head, worried.

I look back at the phone and nod for her to start driving. I'll tell her where in a second.

"Where's Sarah?"

"She's fine, I just called her. She's fine, fine. I, uh..."

It becomes clear to me that he's beside himself, so I change the subject to ease him into telling me why, exactly.

"Where were you two?"

"We went to visit Charley," John says at once. It sounds rehearsed, because it probably _is_ rehearsed. That fucking bitch can't help but keep her secrets.

"We were supposed to meet up in the desert."

"I know. It was only for a little while. He was living at a lighthouse..."

And so it goes. He eventually tells me that Charley is dead and the people who killed him sound really fucking similar to the guys who tried to nab me. I start rubbing my head involuntarily. This isn't good. This isn't good at all.

Sarah is okay. We're meeting up soon at a graveyard. A potter's field.

He sounds supernaturally calm. This is the time I expect him to start with the waterworks, to feel sorry for himself and oh, what a terrible thing his glorious destiny is.

But he doesn't do that. He sounds like he normally does, but he's keeping it together for a change.

I'm almost glad Charley's dead. If every death has this effect on John, then it was worth it.

I can't wait to see him grow up to be that man. I think I'll weep when it happens.

---

I don't find Kyle immediately. I expect to see him around every corner, I expect every dark shape to be him, but he never shows up.

I feel wretched. I think crazily that I'm already coming down with radiation poisoning and soon my hair will start to fall out. I can't think straight, I've already made a mess of myself tonight and I need to think clearly.

I want to live so much. I want to find Kyle. I want my old life back. I think this is a dream.

I've only felt this way once.

--

I find Sarah at the location. She's standing there by the hill, alone. The tragic, lonely figure no one understands and lives to fight against the world. She pisses me off with her melodramatics more than John does. The machine stays back at the truck and watches.

I walk over and stand beside her, chewing my lip and staring out at the field of John and Jane Does. It occurs to me that, like everything else about this woman, this has been orchestrated. I think Kyle's buried here.

She said she'd take me to see him one time. I almost smile at her kept promise, but I'm too annoyed with her to actually do it. I choose to focus on Kyle himself, and I can only hope I end up somewhere half as good as he did. In the future you get a ditch. Anything above that is a marked improvement in my book.

We talk. We beat around the bush. It didn't always used to be like this. We used to trust one another. Sort of.

Things are spiraling out of our control, and we don't even mention it. We ignore it. We focus on the problem at hand and not the big picture. I go along with it. I'm the soldier. It's my job.

John appears and it's actually he who reminds us of what's going on.

I apologize about Charley. John smiles thinly at me.

He shows us a picture.

---

I get back to our small hiding place and I cry for a while, feeling sorry for myself, sorry for Kyle, sorry for our little sad, blown up world. Then I go to sleep.

It was around two years ago, 2009. I was thirteen.

--

We go in separate trucks. I decide to go with John and he seems to be in deep thought for most of the trip. I can't help but wonder if he even cares about Charley. If he cares that the man died to protect him. That's gotta count for something, doesn't it?

He keeps looking at that picture of the girl, Savannah. Pretty name. There's a lot of Sarahs and Camerons, but not too many Savannah's.

I don't think too much about the mission at hand. It's all the same to me, really. Go here, protect him/her, extract the subject, destroy the Terminator, be the distraction. Missions with objectives. I live and breathe them. They're easy to me.

No, I choose to think about what's happened to us, what's going to happen to us. Jesse is dead. I killed her, and she's dead. The one woman I loved was a traitorous, murdering little bitch.

I despise this machine. I wish she'd burn and die, and if she had a soul it would go straight to hell. But she saved me today. I can't forget that.

Sarah is just Sarah. Nothing more, nothing less. I think, sooner or later, she's going to find an excuse to kill me.

But then again, I don't think she would, no matter what.

I'm just a soldier, floating between missions and being ignored and used when there's downtime. I amuse myself by drinking alcohol and playing the voyeur with my younger self and Kyle. That's the only time I've really been happy, and I haven't visited those two kids since I brought John to see them.

I should really do that again.

John has changed. He's different. I hesitate to say better, but I think it's like a veil has been lifted from his eyes and he's actually seeing the world for what it is now. I wonder if his girlfriend biting the dust did that to him. I think it's a lot of things.

He understands now. I wonder if he even cares about life anymore, or if we're all just walking dead bodies to him. Zombies. All we have to do is fall over and he'll keep going.

It's weird to see him like this. A while ago, he wanted nothing to do with this. Now he accepts it without enthusiasm, without complaint.

And that matters. It matters more than him going to a good college, or having a steady job. I hope Sarah understands that as much as I do.

"Hey," I say.

John looks up.

"When this is over, how about we go check on Kyle and, y'know. When we have time."

He smiles and says he'd like that. Ten seconds later, he starts crying. I just drive.

---

First, there was this guy who kept watching me and Kyle when we played baseball. One time he brought another guy with him. I dunno what their deal was. I don't know why I even care now, or how that matters.

One day he just stopped.

The first day I noticed that was a school day. I was thirteen. The guy just kept going round and round in my head. I felt obsessed, I thought I might have been a little, y'know, for him. It felt like we were connected in a way that made me feel confused and sick to my stomach.

And one day, a school day, it just stopped.

--

The Weaver home is opulent and incredibly dull. It's sort of like seeing bad art, an oxymoron. It's full of glass surfaces and white textures.

Sarah insists we observe at first, make sure the security's not good enough to prevent our job from working. I observe. I'm a good soldier. I sit in the back with John and we say nothing to each other. He doesn't have a gun. He's on kidnapper detail.

If the red-headed Terminator from a few months ago is any indication, Savannah is probably a Skynet target. Why she hasn't been dealt with before now, I dunno, but she might know something useful. We'll find out.

We sit in the back, near a green, steep hill. We watch a twenty-something woman do crunches in a massive gym.

Nothing happens for a while.

"You okay?" I ask him.

He nods silently, focusing on the house.

He wants to feel. He doesn't think that he should, though. I understand this without condoning it. I know the feeling myself. I realize I love him desperately, although he may think I'm an asshole, although I managed to go and trick myself and I didn't do anything about Jesse until John came down and forced me to see the truth. He may partially blame me for Riley's death.

Does it matter? I'm not sure if it does.

A peach van drives up to the house, and a man steps out. He's wearing the same drab colored jumpsuit the thugs were going around in, and his steps are cool and methodical. He carries a big jug of water with ease and he adjusts something on the back of his pants.

"Damnit," John mutters. He gets on the phone with his mother.

---

We were learning fractions again. I hated math. I really did. It was around midday.

I kept smiling and winking at this girl, Christine. She thinks I'm cute.

I think so too.

--

We decide to move in almost a full second before a single gunshot rings out. The black-suited girl had disappeared just a moment before.

We split up. John takes the garage, I'll follow the Terminator through the front entrance. I dunno where Sarah and Cameron will be coming in from.

Before we part, John tells me to be careful. I tell him the same thing.

I start running across the green expanse, keeping my eyes set on the glass overlay of the house. I catch a glimpse of a small figure in a dress running down a hallway. Fucking hell.

---

It's my turn to go up to the whiteboard. I try to keep the numbers in my head. I don't want to stay up there too long. It's a desperate, lonely feeling, like you're a bug on a plate and the rest of the world exists to observe you.

I try to make this quick.

--

The foyer of the house is empty save for the body, shot cleanly through the forehead. At least it was quick for her.

I walk slowly, cautiously through a living room with a big table and some discarded homework. Math homework. I check behind a big television set, and I find nothing. That's when I start to hear gunshots.

---

I carried the four. I was actually doing pretty damn good.

--

I hear yelling. It's downstairs, in the garage. I take my time going through the foyer. I don't know what the hell is going on. If we're lucky, Cameron is beating the living crap out of the thing and we'll all be fine.

If not...

I dunno. I start to hear pounding metal and sounds of concrete breaking. I look around. Where the hell is John and Sarah? I expected them to go through here.

---

I felt a growing sensation of dread in my stomach. It actually hurt, really bad.

--

While we were driving up to Sarah's graveyard, I said to Cameron that it was a damn shame Charley had to die.

She said it had been his time.

I said it's no one's time. There's no fate but what we make, or however the crazy bitch said it. People can control their destiny as long as they're smart and lucky.

Cameron said there's a bullet for everyone. And a time. And a place. Even for her own kind, there comes a point where death is inevitable, whether it's pre-planned and you get to think about it or _boom_, it just happens.

She said what mattered was that the man died protecting John. She told me... confided in me... that she hoped her own destruction would be in the service of that boy.

I couldn't help agreeing. What more could you ask for?

---

The marker shook in my hands and the teacher asked if I was okay.

--

I step over the woman's body again and glance outside. I hear nothing all of a sudden except footsteps somewhere down the hall. It's loud and unhurried.

Half of me wants to run in the other direction. I still think Cameron needs support, though. I just want to see someone. I want to be optimistic. She's destroyed a bunch of her kind already, what's one more ticker to the list? I walk forward, expecting to see her.

---

_I_ shake. The kids behind me start muttering in fear.

--

I am a soldier. There is a time and a place for soldiers, whether we like it or not. I want to die for John Connor. I want to see him grow up. I want to take him to see his family again and again and again.

I want to live and see this world prosper, I want to beat these machine motherfuckers and _win._ I want to thank Cameron for saving me.

I am a soldier, though. I don't get to make that choice.

---

The feeling in my stomach explodes into outright pain and I collapse against the ground. I feel-

--

I round the corner and...

He's shooting. You know how some people say they expect their deaths? That they can see it coming?

It's a load of fucking bullshit. I don't even get to raise my gun.

---

-like I've died. I start to scream in pain, like I've been disconnected from something and I am blind, I am alone. My head feels like it's been split in half and everyone is just watching in silent terror.

--

There's not much to say. The bullet hit.

---

I lose consciousness, it hurts so bad.

--

I didn't even see Sarah. I didn't even see Cameron.

I saw John. I see this Terminator, already moving past my crumpling corpse.

Oh, god.

--

I wake in the nurse's office. I feel dull. I feel drained and useless. There's a void in my life that I don't understand and I feel so fucking sad that it hurts to breathe.

---

I guess I have what you'd call an out of body experience. It lasts maybe a second. I flip my non-corporal middle finger at the Terminator's retreating back and then I lose consciousness completely. There's a bullet in my head.

I keep thinking _not like this not like this not like this_

But yes. Like this, Derek Reese. Like this. I bargain. I beg. I want to see John, Sarah, even the fucking machine Cameron one last time.

But this is my bullet. It's sudden. If you told me yesterday that this would happen I would have punched you in the face.

That doesn't make it any less true. I'm dead, and that's basically it.

Funny thing, that.

--

So yeah, this feeling, with Kyle being gone, it's sort of like _that. _

I still don't know what caused it. They called it a seizure. I refused to talk about it afterwards. I don't even want to remember it even now, even after the world has ended.

I wanted to die. I guess that's the difference between now and then. I don't want to die right now. I want to do things. I want to find Kyle, and I _will_ find Kyle. I _will_ do this.

It's not my time yet, it just isn't.

**A/N: **Well, that was pretty nebulous. But it fits my thoughts completely on Derek's rather unceremonious death. I hope it's done him justice, but I wanted to stay true to the abruptness of the scene.

Anyway. Lemme know what you think.


End file.
